Good morning my beautiful doves! If you haven't immediately
noticed, I have a new backdrop. Yes, I've finally settled down
into a new apartment in Brooklyn and I guess if you haven't been following my
Instagram rants about my housing situation, you're probably a little bit confused because
I had announced that I had moved into a new apartment a couple videos ago. But basically what
ended up happening is that my landlord was awful and she kicked us out the same month that we
moved in, and I'm still not sure if it was legal, but me and my roommate scrambled to find new
housing and we found this place, and in the end, this place is the nicest apartment I've ever
lived in, so I'm really excited about it. I'm still in the midst of
decorating so I guess I'm not fully settled in yet but i definitely want to
give an apartment tour at some point, maybe in like a month, because I
don't really have much furniture... I personally am only interested
in buying secondhand furniture or used furniture and I know my roommate is
really into building their own furniture, so it's going to take a little bit longer
for us to get camera ready. But I'll show you a couple things in my room really
quickly because I'm just that excited. Don't mind the mess in the background,
but i'm most proud of this antique gold mirror that I found off of craigslist last
week. I just love how the gold looks against the white walls and especially how the ornate
frame looks against the cool molding details I have on my walls. I put the frame off center
because of just the way that the molding is, but i'm planning to put up some cast iron hooks
on this side so I can hang up all my bonnets. I also got this vintage carriage bench that is
just holding some of my books for now. But i bought this and I was really excited because
I wanted a little bit of a reading nook here by my window, because I just always wanted to
have a reading spot by a window. I need to sew a tufted bench cushion for this because it is a
bit of a peculiar shape here and the only person on Etsy that I found that could sew tufted bench
cushions for a reasonable price is booked up till April... so I'm taking matters into my own hands.
Thank you, thank you very much. So this is my bed and the lighting is kind of ass
right now but my mom got it--well technically the bed is an antique from Italy--and my mom bought
it off of this 98 year old woman who lived near us for like 100 dollars, which is crazy. It has
this brass hardware and an off-white/ivory frame/metal thing - I don't know. It is missing
one of these things. It should go here but it's whatever, it adds to the character I guess.
Anyway I just wanted to give a little bit of a life update but as I promised in the title: Today
we're going to be talking about Anastasia the 1997 Don Bluth animated movie based on the tragic
legacy of the real life Grand Duchess Anastasia. I think that's how you
pronounce her name correctly. Throughout this video, I'm going to be using
"Anastasia" when I talk about this movie, "Anastasia" when i'm talking about the real-life
person, and "Anya" when I'm talking about the main character, because she does go by
"Anya" for most of the movie. I was very obsessed with this movie growing up. Anya was
one of my favorite girl heroines of the time. "You broke my nose." "Men are such babies." I love Meg Ryan who is Anya's voice actress, and I thought Dimitri, the
love interest, was super cute. "Anya I'm just trying to help, all right?" "Dimitri, do you really think I'm royalty? "You know I do." "Then stop bossing me around!" Shipped these two really hard. So you can imagine how totally bummed I was when in middle school I found
out that the real life Anastasia died and she and her entire family were violently
stabbed to death in a dark basement... and then i kind of realized how messed up it is
to make a children's movie based on this tragedy. Anyways... I was re-watching this movie for this video
and I feel like just knowing the real story made some of the family sequences a lot
more disturbing. I just kept thinking about how they were all violently murdered,
even in this alternative Don Bluth universe the rest of the children were killed and
this was just never addressed in the movie. It was just completely like... "well, forget
about it," because it's a children's movie, which brings us to once again the
question: Why is this a children's movie? But with all that aside I thought it'd
be fun to dive into the clothing of early 20th century Russia. First things
first, I would absolutely not be able to make this video without the help of Anna,
Jane, and Maia. I posted a cry for help on my IG stories a couple days ago and these
three people just really came through helping me scour the Russian side of the web to find image
resources and translating Russian texts for me, so everyone let's say, "Thank you Anna,
Jane, and Maia!" ("You go, girl.") So the movie Anastasia takes place in St.
Petersburg, Russia. Anya is eight years old in the first scene, which takes place in 1916. We
first see her at a ball celebrating the Romanov Tercentenary, aka the 300th anniversary of Romanov
rule, so fact check: Anastasia was born in 1901, so she would have been 15 in 1916. Also there
was no ball in 1916 at the Winter Palace, the Romanov Tercentenary ball took place in
1913 at the Nobleman's Assembly, not in the Winter Palace. The last big ball that was housed
at the winter palace was in October 1904 and after that it only hosted formal ceremonies. Other
historical things to note: the Romanov family was actually massacred in 1918, the movie's
villain Rasputin had no hand in their deaths, and St. Petersburg was not called
"St. Petersburg" at the time. In 1914, the city was changed to Petrograd and in 1924,
the city name was changed again to Leningrad. So the song "A Rumor in St. Petersburg"
should really be "A Rumor in Leningrad." I guess that doesn't have the same ring to it. I've decided to break down three of Anya's
looks in the movie. You might be surprised by the three I've picked. She does
wear a lot of different outfits, more so than most animated movie protagonists,
but I wanted to focus more specifically on the Russian outfits. So I'm actually not going
to be talking about the Parisian outfits. Just know that her Parisian outfits are not very
accurate to 1920s fashion and that's pretty easy to tell based on silhouette alone. Let's start
with the first ball gown she wears. Anya wears a robe for the Romanov Tercentenary ball that
looks to be based on traditional 17th century aristocratic clothing. The robe is of a teal
blue color with wide sleeves, a cape-like collar, gold embellishments, and a matching
round headdress called a "kokoshnik." That might be a wrong
pronunciation. I'm very sorry. Also, this kind of collar was originally worn by
Byzantine clergy but Russian clergy and nobility started wearing them for formal occasions in
the late 10th century when Christianity was introduced to Russia. In reality, Anya did
not attend the Romanov Tercentenary ball, she was not old enough. The only Romanov children
who were in attendance were Olga and Tatiana. Also after doing some research, I realized the ball
in the movie actually looks to be based on the 1903 ball, which was held to celebrate the 200th
anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg. This ball was a costume ball and
the theme was 17th century Russia, or more specifically, the reign of Tsar Alexei
Mikhailovich. All guests were expected to dress in traditional historical attire. There's not too
much information on the 1913 ball. Some sites out there say that it was also a costume ball, but I
don't think that was true. I found a painting by Dmitri Kardovsky depicting the ball scene, and if
we look closely, we can see that all the guests are wearing standard court dress. With that said
in 1903, the Russian court went really hard at the event. Court ladies wore embroidered sundresses
and jewels kokoshniks and gentlemen wore decorated caftans and boyer-style fur hats. The Empress
Dowager Maria Feodorovna was also in attendance, and her animated outfit looks to be based on
the costume that she wore to this ball. You can see the resemblance in the wide collar, the
pointed headdress, and the veil in the back. The animated version is obviously less detailed but I
understand that because of animation technology it would have been unreasonably difficult to decorate
the dress with all the jewels she actually wore in the movie. Tsar Nicholas II is wearing
a pretty standard military inspired outfit, which he kind of did wear in real life. According
to Russian Splendor: Sumptuous Fashions of the Russian Court, "for ceremonial occasions, Nicky
usually wore a light blue attaman uniform with a diamond Saint Andrews star and a diamond Order of
Saint Andrew hanging on the Saint Andrew chain." For those of you who are a little bit
confused about the whole Saint Andrew thing, the Order of Saint Andrew was established in
1698 by Peter the Great in honor of Saint Andrew, Jesus's first apostle and the patron saint of
Russia. The order of Saint Andrew is used to award prominent people and statesmen. Instead of this
outfit, I kind of wish they went the full mile and put him in the Alexei Mikhailovich
costume he actually wore to the ball. It was recorded as being raspberry
colored with gold and silver embroidery, and before any animators tell me that it's
unrealistic to do that, yes I understand the costume is very elaborate, but if we look at the
Dowager Empress in the way that she is dressed: her silhouette is kind of just the same as her
real life dress, and I think if they just did something where the design was shaped like what
Tsar Nicholas II was wearing, then that would have been better. Because Anastasia wasn't in
attendance, I think the animators based her robe on the robe of Countess Elisabeth Cheremetew. You
can see the resemblance in the white collar and the color blue with gold embroidery. The kokoshnik
looks to actually be based on a real kokoshnik that Anastasia is depicted wearing with her
court gown in 1910. So for historical accuracy, considering Anastasia wasn't in attendance
and because there was no actual ball in 1916, it's kind of hard to rate. But if she was an
older character and attending the 1903 ball, then this design would be really good. The second
dress I want to talk about is this blue dress that Dimitri gives Anya on the boat on the way to
Paris. I will point out that there was a bit of an animation goof here because at first you see
the dress has a white trim, but then when she puts it on there's no more trim. Anyways, this dress is
not accurate for the 1920s. The 1920s had a very tubular silhouette, and by the mid-20s, the hem
had risen to just below the knee. But i actually don't want to talk about what a 1920s accurate
version of this dress would be, I'd rather talk about what i would have advised the animation team
to do when designing this dress. Anastasia and her sisters were often photographed wearing these
very pastel or lily white Edwardian dresses. These white dresses are known as lingerie dresses
sometimes called lawn dresses. Unlike the name, lingerie dresses were actual garments, not
undergarments. These dresses were very popular all over Europe and America among younger
women. They were very delicate, lightweight, and normally made of cotton. Lingerie dresses
were either white or off-white and featured embroidery in set lacing and pin tucking. And
not to sound like a better con man than Dimitri, because i'm sure Dimitri has conned many a people,
and I have conned no one... If I was a con man trying to convince the Dowager Empress that this
woman I presented her is indeed Anastasia, then I would have had her dressed like the way
that Anastasia was dressed before she died. Oh excuse me, I mean when she went missing. "I am so much happier now that i'm dead." "Technically missing." Finally let's talk about Anya's court
gown--probably what you all clicked on to hear me talk about. I love this dress so much.
It's probably one of my favorite animated dresses of all time. Is that crazy for me to say? But
yeah I think so, and the best part is that it's probably going to be as accurate as is going
to get to the real thing for 90s 2D animation. If you look up images of the real Anastasia or
any of her sisters or really any female member of the royal family you'll see that they're all
wearing open shoulder gowns with these wide slit hanging sleeves and a satin sash. The tiara
she's wearing is called a kokoshinik tiara. It's basically just a tiara that is inspired
by the kokoshinik shape. What's interesting about 19th and 20th century Russian court gowns is
that they had a very distinctive style compared to other European court gowns. This was absolutely
purposeful, but it wasn't always like this. From 1700 to 1724, Peter the Great had issued
a series of dress reforms with the intention of moving away from Russian costume and towards
Saxon, German and French forms of dress. People initially resisted these clothing changes,
so decrees were often repeated, they hung up stuffed animals wearing clothing samples at city
gates. and on a less fun note, disobedience was often punished with fines or even capital
punishment sometimes. We started to see more relaxation in these rules after his reign, and
Catherine the Great actually tried to reintroduce Russian dress. In 1791, the magazine called "The
Magazine of English, French and German Fashion," reported that for big balls like when celebrating
coronations or Christian holidays and for visits to noble and honorable houses, the ladies
would wear Russian dresses of obyar, which is a moire fabric with golden or silver pattern, and
double taffetas decorated with silks and jewels. If I fooled you into thinking I
was reading Russian... I didn't. That was a translation offered
to me by Jane. Thank you, Jane. But it wasn't till the 19th century that Tsar
Nicholas I decided to officially bring back traditional costumes. On February 27th 1834,
Nicholas I published an official statement that detailed new court dress guidelines. Some
things that were in this document include how ladies of the state were supposed to wear green
velvet dresses with gold embroidery and how all ladies who came into court were supposed to
wear a kokoshnik with a white veil. Looking at some examples, we can see how the Russian court
gowns were a hybrid of 1830s French romantic-style dresses and traditional Russian styles. The gown
that Anya wears is of the typical Russian court gown design in the early 20th century. Her gown
has three components: the bodice, the underskirt, and the overgarment that had a train. I will say
though that because of her rank, her train should be very long. The overgarment was typically made
of velvet and adorned with jewels, embroidery, sequins, and pearls. The underskirt was made of
white silk or satin and embroidered with foliate designs in gold or silver thread. The bodices
were also made of velvet with brocade or satin. So I hope you're seeing a theme here:
lots of gold and silver embroidery. The sleeves are definitely the most unique
part of the dress and were actually inspired by "hanging sleeves" in 16th and 17th
century traditional Russian clothing. Clothing culture 1350 to 1650 by Catherine
Richardson mentions two traditional Russian garments with "hanging sleeves." The first is a
"letnik." We can see how the sleeves are very long and only sewn together about half their length
so the end of the sleeves are hanging freely. There's also another garment that was worn
as outerwear called a "telogreya." It had extra long hanging "fake" sleeves. According to
Elizabeth Mackey's report on Russian court dress, the official look was designed to make the Russian
imperial court look distinct from other European courts "to demonstrate both the authority of the
tsar over the nobility and the unity that he and his court felt with the people." These dresses
were so very expensive and show how the Russian imperial family expressed power through dress.
For context, Empress Alexandra spent 996 pounds on her coronation gown when the average cost for a
British court gown was 300 pounds. In conclusion, I think that the animation team did a spectacular
job when it came to designing Russian court gowns, not so much for the rest of the fashions
depicted in the movie. But overall, compared to other animated movies of the time,
this was just really good. Also this entire movie was completely historically inaccurate
anyway, so i think it is kind of funny that the one thing that they did choose to skew on the
side of accuracy on were the Russian court gowns. That's all I have for today.
Thank you so much for watching! I'll see you all next time hopefully
with more decor in the background.
